How to Find Your Mineral Foundation Part II: Colors & Shades

If you haven’t read the first blog article on how to find your mineral foundation, start there. Once you have sorted out your skin tone, it’s just one more easy step to finding your ideal foundation color. At Alima Pure, our foundations fall into six foundation shade ranges, each with its own unique mix of pink, yellow and green pigments, to blend flawlessly with your skin:

Cool – You know if you are cool. Just kidding. But if you look best in silver and cool colors (such as pink, navy, and violet) you are likely to wear a foundation shade from our “Cool” line.

Neutral – If you cannot decide whether your skin tone is cool or neutral, you probably need a Neutral foundation shade. Choose this if you look best in silver and cool colors, but you can also get away with slightly warmer colors, such as brown or green, with just a hint of a yellow undertone.

Beige – If you are pretty sure you have a neutral undertone, can wear both silver and gold (but perhaps 14k rather than 24k) and look good in both cool and warm colors as long as they are not too icy or yellowish, Beige is your answer. In fact, Beige is our most popular color range and works well for many people.

Warm – If you look best in gold and earth tones you are likely to wear a shade from our Warm range. Hold your hand next to a sheet of white paper. If your hand seems a bit yellowish or peachy by comparison, or if you can’t wear cool colors (baby blue?), you are likely to be “Warm.”

Golden – If you have lots of yellow in your skin tone, then you may do well with a Golden shade, but we encourage you to try a warm shade, too. The Golden tones are extremely yellow!

Olive – Alima’s olive is a true neutral without strong yellow or pink undertones. Kate created this line after a trip to Italy, where she was captivated by the beauty of Italian skin. “Olives” are not at all green, certainly, but also not yellow or pink. It’s more like a rich color of coffee, with more or less cream added depending on the depth of shade. This may also be your color line if foundations often tend to turn orange on you.

Once you have selected a shade range or two to sample, you can then select a specific shade of foundation ranging from “0” to “9.” Keep in mind that Alima Pure wants everyone to be able to wear safe, natural foundation that matches his or her skin, so we created 61 shades that are meant to be appropriate for skins that are very light or very deep.

With the exception of the Olive range, “0” level foundations are only worth considering if you have never (or very seldom) been able to find a foundation light enough for your skin in a department store. Olives are skewed a little deeper, so Olive 0 is comparable in depth to about a level “2” in most other shade ranges.

At the deeper end of the spectrum, Cools, Olives and Neutrals are darker than Beiges, Warms and Goldens because the yellow pigments in these ranges tend to lighten the shades. We recommend you sample the foundation shade that you think will work best for you and maybe one shade lighter and one shade darker.